Life and how to live it
by Electro Club
Summary: It was twisted, slightly disturbing and fairly wrong. But maybe, just maybe, it was happiness. Ianto/Jack, mentions of Ianto/Lisa. R&R!


**Title: **Life and how to live it.  
**Fandom:** Torchwood.  
**Characters, pairing:** Ianto-centric, mentions of Ianto/Jack and Ianto/Lisa.  
**Spoiler:** None.  
**Word count:** 1149.  
**Beta-work by:** [ purestoneworker ]

**Summary:** _It was twisted, slightly disturbing and fairly wrong. But maybe, just maybe, it was happiness._

**A/N:**The title is the name of a song by REM.

x-x-x-x-x

He thinks of Lisa and feels his chest fill with a warm sensation of happiness and longing and faraway memories in the back of his mind curving up the corner of his lips just a little bit into a smile he doesn't even know is there. For a long time the thoughts of Lisa meant pain and suffering, blood and nightmares. She had meant a crime and a monster and the lost lives he had been responsible for, and the lives he almost took. He couldn't miss her without aching; he couldn't love her and not feel guilty. And it killed him a little every time.

The hardest part wasn't being forgiven, it was forgiving himself, for knowing he'd do it all over again, because he loved her and was just a little bit nuts. For the first time in what felt like centuries, Ianto thought of his lost girlfriend and enjoyed the yearning.

Lisa was now the memory of a life that seemed almost normal, compared to the one he now had. They would oversleep on Sundays (though while Lisa normally made great use of her extra sleeping hours, Ianto just fancied the idea) and make plans. They went camping and they talked about getting married, once or twice. Even the way she used to leave her clothes hanging at doorknobs and her shoes scattered around the flat, or the way she used to skip through the television channels without ever really watching, things that back then were flaws and fights and a test to his forbearance, now got a warm and affectionate giggle out of him. Lisa was soft touches and snogs at lunchtime and burned toasts in the morning. He could even remember with fondness all the times he almost hated her as much as he loved her, for reasons that now seemed nothing but frivolous and easily tolerable.

It felt good to have those memories back as they were, though they now felt like someone else's life.

For a long time, Ianto thought the rats in his stomach were as inherent to his existence as the air in his lungs. Maybe more. He'd felt gelatinous. Gelatinous was the word. His body not only seemed to have the denseness of jelly, but its translucence as well. He had the impression that, if he held his hand up to the light, he would be able to see through it. All blood and lymph had been drained from his body, leaving only a fragile structure of bones and skin, and nerves. Mostly nerves. All sensations were amplified. His suit scratched his skin unmercifully; his shoes made his feet ache. Even his throat seemed to be constantly dry, and he could feel it as everything he ate and drank knifed through his body torturingly. The mere action of balling his fist felt like an enormous effort that made his articulations crack.

He was gone, just didn't know it yet. His life had been reduced to a phantasmagorical existence between the loneliness of his bedroom and the thick, heavy silence of his kitchen, and he was convinced there was no escape.

It was to live day after day stretching out a present that had no future. And even the past wasn't merciful to him. The one thing that could put his mind at ease and soothe the pain of loss and guilt was haunting him with the vile determination of an executioner, digging its claws rabidly on his flesh and piercing all the way to his sore soul. He couldn't think of Lisa. He couldn't love Lisa. He hadn't just lost her; he had lost the memory of everything good and comforting she had once meant, the one dear thing he should be able to hold on to.

His weeks of suspension had been hell.

And then along came Jack. He never needed to say anything, Jack just knew. Somehow, he knew. Jack always knew. His grandiose figure stood out more than with the confidence, the strength and the clever smugness Ianto was used to see. He had comprehension, colored with irony. He was harsh and severe, and maybe a little bitter, but he was offering a hand notwithstanding.

Jack was forgiving him, even though he neither deserved nor asked for forgiveness. Jack was better than him.

And Ianto knew that if he could make it through all that, he could make it through anything, even if his mind told him otherwise.

He had another life now, and it wasn't just a disguise anymore. He liked his new life, and apparently his new life finally seemed to come to terms with him. He had lastly come to an agreement with this Ianto, who risked his neck and did not expect to live to see the next day. He discovered he didn't need plans or a detailed schedule and cut and dried resolutions in order to function, he was actually good at improvisation. Ianto suspected he'd never really be a fan of the adrenalin and the dodging bullets and the end of the world like Jack, Gwen and Owen, or even Tosh, in some ways.

He wasn't sure he still knew what happiness was like. But he figured it was something close to that. Like lying in bed awaken at night not because he was afraid of closing his eyes, but because he wanted to _watch _and he wanted to _know_; or stretch his legs just a little under the blankets and feel his knee rubbing lightly against someone else's. Happiness even felt like the annoyance of being woken during the night by Jack's heavy arm being sumptuously thrown over his chest as he slept. He remembered it vaguely, but it had something to do with less than perfect and less than right.

Jack didn't give him just a job and an occupation, or a second chance of being part of the team, and doing so, this time, as himself. Jack didn't just give him a meaning and a very active sex life.

Jack gave him a sensation of something that kept ringing in the back of his mind and making him feel like smiling, just slightly and triumphantly, and he couldn't quite name it.

Jack gave him Lisa back.

For that, Ianto trusted him more than he trusted himself. For that, he'd go to the end of the world, and back, and still have a fucking smile across his face. He'd kill and he'd die. He'd be whoever he had to, because in the end he'd still be himself. In fact, now he was someone at all, again. And he wasn't sure if he had been the one to find himself, or if Jack had done that for him as well. But he reckoned it made no difference, perhaps it was all the same.

For that, he was thankful.

It was twisted, slightly disturbing and fairly wrong. But maybe, just maybe, it was happiness.

**The End.**


End file.
